The Killer Shrews (1959)

Directed by Ray Kellogg [Other horror films: The Giant Gila Monster (1959)]

While calling The Killer Shrews a cult classic might be a bit strong, I do think it’s fair to say that this late 50’s film, despite some effects failures and less-than-stellar performances, is a decent amount of fun, although I also think it’s fair to say it can still feel on the average end.

It’s a pretty short film, at around an hour and ten minutes. Because it’s digestible, it doesn’t take too long to get moving, and given there’s only a handful of characters here, that keeps things simple. The plot is somewhat standard 50’s monster fair, the difference being that instead of one giant monster (as seen in The Giant Claw, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Black Scorpion, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and Earth vs the Spider), there’s lots of smaller giant monsters (similar, I suppose to Them!, although these shrews are much smaller than those anty bois).

That said, it’s also a movie with it’s foot in door of the following decade – while it’s a brief scene, a character gets bit on the leg, and we actually see a bit of blood. It’s a black-and-white film, so it’s not like the blood stands out that much, but it was a tad more violent than you’d expect from the late 1950’s. It’s not much, but give it four years, and this could have been a much different product.

Which isn’t to say that the product we do have isn’t good, as I do tend to find it a fun movie. The Killer Shrews is simple in story, but I think a lot of it works well.

I appreciate the atmosphere, for instance – on a small island, a group of people must bunker down in a house during a hurricane as killer shrews threaten their existence. The hurricane was a nice touch, and there’s a scene in which characters are keeping watch while the others sleep, going room to room, and I was immediately reminded of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, as the group’s holed up in the dark house, alone. This had a good atmosphere, and that went a long way to helping out.

James Best (Death Mask, Return of the Killer Shrews) wasn’t always the most defensible lead – at one point, he’s even close to throwing someone over a fence to the shrews – but he was decent as the generic, rugged man. Ken Curtis (mostly known for his western films) made for a fun and unlikable antagonistic force. I didn’t care much for Ingrid Goude’s character, but that has more to do with gender roles at the time than anything else. The fact that they had an in-story reference to her Swedish accent was fun, at least.

Of the other four performances – Baruch Lumet, Judge Henry Dupree, Gordon McLendon, and Alfredo de Soto – I think I liked de Soto the best. Dupree was sadly more a stereotypical portrayal of black men at the time (nowhere near as bad as Mantan Moreland’s usual character, at least), and despite lasting longer than expected, Lumet didn’t really stand out much to me. McLendon was sort of fun, though.

Certainly, there’s not a ton to The Killer Shrews. Some people make a big deal out of the shrews – for many of the scenes, they used dogs (wearing some type of cute costume) and hand-puppets. Honestly, I don’t think that harmed the film much. It may have looked silly at some points, but it’s not an easy case to make that it looks much worse than the average giant monster movie.

What works for this one is the atmosphere, which I deeply appreciated. The finale was quite amusing, reminding me of something you’d see in Tremors II: Aftershocks – I’ve seen this movie once before, but entirely forgot about the goofy, yet sensible, way the group tries to escape. The Killer Shrews is a fun film. It may not be any more than that, but I had a good time with it.

7/10